like the industry is in a slump but afraid to take risks creatively

isn't that kind of true about most entertainment industries these days?

the end of last year saw a huge slump for most tech/entertainment companies

but especailly the triumvirate of evil

well, the entertainment industry in my country is far to infected with trump derrangement syndrome and are foaming at the mouth with progressive cancer

not so much afraid but woke and going broke

i get the feeling that some of has to do with move away from older/traditional forms of media

the younger the cohort/demographic, the less influenced they are established media

so companies are losing their marbles trying to secure established IPs whilst also watering them down to appeal to a newer broader audience

and not just domestically

places like china are for the time being a huge untapped market

i think that is what is partly behind the rush to get out as many star wars movies as possible

well that's just one example

stuff like diablo immortal just seems like one last wringing of the nearly bloodless cashcow's corpse of it's last few remaining drops of blood though

that's a good example actually

the diablo mobile game was a reskin of a mobile/casual rpg developed for/in china

they just wanted to trot it out as it was something already to go

it's lazy

but i can see why they did it

the bigger problem is the useless hacks in PR/community management

they call gamers entitled and what not

but they're one of the last groups that are invested in their hobby/past time

what can be entitled with wanting the best value for your purchase?

exactly

your already buying a game that isn't even made a lot now (pre order) and that changes to add ever more ways to nickle and dime you (patches) as it's sold back to you in slices (DLC)

pretty much

over a decade back they were practically throwing a free section of the game at you hoping you'd buy it

now it's pre orders, on disc DLC, day one DLC, loot boxes ...

and I'd bet they track their players and sell that data as well

plus in game ads of course

it's even worse than that

you know how always online DRM is a shitty practise?

what if i told you they're planning on having streaming only play

you will never even have the files on your computer

it won't be to long until they hijack your pc to run a cryptominer, wait for it

don't give them ideas

lol

play some CoD and your CPU+gpu stay at 100% because they are using your 'idle' power to run a cryptominer. That will likely be what is next

i mean, streaming the games is nice... but I know the assholes will shit over the players.

what is to stop some kind of free open source gaming platform thing?

like an engine and what not?